Grishoalbrand / Griselbrand Reanimator

Thanks, yeah, except for drazi, anger is probably better. And the field looks like dredge might be good, so having anger in the case of someone audibling to dredge would be much better.

I suppose Leyline helps against Titan just as well as Moon. It's better against burn. But, probably isn't worth bringing in against jeskai or delver. I've cheesed some wins against jeskai with a quick Moon on the play. Leyline does have the problem of being virtually uncastabe when not in your opener. Doesn't look like many discard decks, so hard to get extra value there.

Or did you mean replacing Chalice with Leyline. Chalice really only looks good against infect and lantern and maybe burn on the play. Leyline is much better against burn, and recent lantern decks are usually only playing two non-targeted mill rocks, so is probably just as good there, actually.

It might be worth having a 3rd Pact too for burn and blue decks, but you seldom want to draw too many of them, since they can only be used offensively.
Also, might be less GY hate, so she might need less hate for their hate.

Anyway, I think I like my main. What would your 15 cards look like for a sideboard?

Nvm, first and foremost I'm dumb (thought the Looting was a SSG). This changes everything :wall: Otherwise it would be an obvious free roll.

So, lets re-assess this case than:
- If you Pact, you "lose" to double interaction in your upkeep most likely (cause he "stifles" a draw 7 with Path since you need to use Pact on Spell Pierce)
- If you Pact and he has only one remaining Interaction spell, you need to find everything necessary in the top 14 cards (so at least one Shoal to get one redraw). Nice thing is, that your deck is dividable by 7, which doesn't really matter, if there are two Shoals in the last 14 cards (two Shoals let you draw 35 cards). Even if you find three Shoals + Wurms, you can only draw 42 cards (you are exactly at 49 life). This makes things iffy, cause the fizzle chance is REALLY high and since you cannot pay for Pacts (cause not enough U mana) the chance is real, that you just die. If you won game 1 and it is game 2, than I would roll the dices tbh.
- You don't Pact and hope, that he messes it up with Relic and allows you to go off in response. Most unlikely scenario given he plays UW Death and Taxes . However, even if he messes up with Relic, you run into the same problem again regarding interaction. The only change is, that it will be most likely your turn, so you can use your lands twice, before Pact triggers happen.
- You don't Pact, he plays correctly with Relic, you need to TTB. That case is the worst one imo, since a single interaction spell leaves you dead in the water (as long as you cannot cheat in a Borbor and somehow steal a win) since you cannot pay for Pact AND Wurm is not a one hit kill.

So thinking it through, I would yolo it, cause I think in the long run with this exact hand it will be a loss. Especially, since he has a reasonable clock too. Furthermore, since he plays UW Death and Taxes, Vendilion Clique is a card, you need to be aware off, same is true for Spell Queller, which both increases the clock substantially AND give instant speed interaction. V. Clique is especially annoying cause of TTB, since he can just nap the creature in response (happened to me a couple of times >.>' ).

So, what happens here is: let the Titan trigger resolve (he cannot shoot you with Valakut, but prevents the risk of some awkward utility lands). Than Ritual into Lightning Axe the Titan. You are "relic proof" cause of two cards in the graveyard and/or you can cast Goryo's in response to the Relic activation.

The Ritual vs no Ritual is purely a personal decision. No Ritual allows some splice action (and a better TTB if you cannot win now), first Ritual sets up the other Rituals easier if you do not draw two SSGs. In this specific case I would most likely not Ritual right now and just keep it up.

The only big question is now is to try to win on the spot, or pass and try to win in response to anything stupid he might want to do. If he grabs double Valakut, he can than go to attacks, attack, get two Mountains trigger both Valakuts twice (4 triggers) which shoots down Griseldaddy and deals overall 9 damage. With the respective land drop and a one land ramp spell you are looking at an additional 12 damage, which is more than lethal.

Hence, I would try to win in this end step, with casting Ritual first.

1. Kathal, you have good points about the downside scenarios in going for it. My main concerns were the resource constraints (I noted that I had bottomed a shoal, and plus we do not get to gain 7 by attacking/blocking). That the deck is divisible by 7 is not nearly as big here, because we know the very last card is a Shoal, though if we are unfortunate enough to have key resource constraints in the other 6 cards (fast mana or both Borbys), then it will matter.

Then you have to think about the decision tree branch that you are currently facing. We can't assume the opponent misclicks his relic. Let's call his clock a 5 turn clock. By then, we'll need 5 mana (potentially ruined by arbiter/GQ shenanigans, or thalia, which we can reasonably expect from this sort of an archetype) to breach. And even if you get there, Wurm may be an invalid win condition (path invalidates it. Pacts won't help if we can't one shot them). If the Wurm is not a valid win con, we'll then need to draw griselbrand. We pretty much need to draw ~4 specific cards in ~7 draws (counting looting).

With that said, I thought that it'd be a higher percentage play (although still not great) to trust in the Church of Griselbrand

2. This is actually not as interesting as I thought. I thought I could get reliced (tap ability) out if Griselbrand is the single card in the graveyard (discard is a cost), but you can just vengeance in response. You are cold to a SSG+relic activation regardless (Breach Titan lists play SSGs). It was pretty fun in that the only way we could feasibly win this game was if he indeed played a creature like this.

WRT the decision to ritual or not, we must weigh having a startup R or save the ritual for splicing action. Former matters if we draw the other ritual but don't draw enough SSGs, while the latter is relevant if you draw two ssgs or more. Given that we have 4 SSGs and 1 rit left, I think the best move is to hold the ritual to splice and reduce the # of SSGs that we need to hit.

What happened: I pacted the relic and ritual->axe->vengeance. Neither opponent got to untap.

I would just try to kill the breach player while tapped out. Don't want to leave anything to chance here. If he had something stupid like 2 beast withins main deck that'd be disastrous (grasping at straws, but still, i don't see a meaningful benefit to letting him untap).

Sorry, what am I missing? How can we consider not casting the ritual first? If you don't, he can eat your Gris without a mana. I suppose you could hope he's dumb and acts first so you can respond. I guess I missed that you have 8 cards and can pitch Gris to hand size. But if he untaps, it's just too risky. Same situation where he has no need to try to activate the relic until you cast Goryo. I suppose he might be dumb, but if he's smart, he just attacks and kills you and doesn't exile your yard until you've cast Gris. I'd rather play to a line that doesn't need my opponent to make a mistake to win. And with 20 life you get 14 cards to dig. You even have Gris around on his turn if you need to block or soak valakut triggers. And if he kills your Gris, you get to Goryo again on your turn. Seems like all upside to me.
I suppose anything you do loses to ssg, but you gotta give it a try. You don't have time to wait for a better opportunity.

you have a temple and 2 swamps open. you lightning axe him (2 swamps open), discarding griselbrand. You just have to wait for lightning axe to resolve. If he tries to tap relic while lightning axe is on the stack, you vengeance in response. If lightning axe resolves, any tapping of the Relic you can let resolve by exiling lightning axe, leaving griselbrand safe.

I think Kathal was talking about letting him untap after reanimating griselbrand.

I have been playing magic since alara and began playing this deck in ~2013. In 2015 I sold it after a lot of talk about banning it because of GP Charlotte. I rebuilt the deck about a month ago. And have been tasting some of the new cards (specifically cathartic reunion, which I thought was bad) http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/gristel-cannon/ this is my current list. If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve it I am all ears.